Billy Donovan
Billy Donovan
William John Donovan, Jr.is an American professional basketball coach who is currently the head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association. He previously spent 19 seasons at the University of Florida, where his Florida Gators men's basketball teams won two NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships in 2006 and 2007. Donovan has more wins than any other coach in the history of the Florida basketball program, and he coached the Gators to more NCAA tournament appearances,...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth30 May 1965
CityRockville Centre, NY
What happened is significant in basketball in the state of Florida, is significant to the University of Florida. To be a part of it, as I am, I'll remember this for the rest of my life. I'll remember these 10 years, in terms of trying to build things and create a level of consistency.
Lee is one of those guys who understands scouting reports, schemes and how we are guarding. You can be rest assured that he is going to follow everything to the minute detail of what he has to do. So, forget about the shooting part of it, we have just lost maybe our best overall defender.
I'll remember this for the rest of my life.
Because he made shots, it energized the rest of his game. He was getting away from that. He was getting ahead of himself.
He's probably never going to get to a point where he feels great the rest of the season. But I think his confidence level is high. It's good to see him take the amount of shots he took. He put up 11 3s on the road. It was great to see him confidently shoot the basketball and it was great to see him move to the next shot, even when he missed a couple in a row.
He gets bothered at a lot of the attention, or (that) people want to talk to him because it is a unique story. It is a unique family. He worries about getting too much attention and taking away from the rest of the guys. ... He doesn't want that.
Those guys, being seniors, they know how to rest during a game. We had to make them guard to make them uncomfortable on the offensive end.
If he needs an extra day or two to rest, then we've got to rest him. On the perimeter right now, we need to make sure we have a healthy complement of players.
I'm very blessed and thankful to coach these kids.
I'm sure he'd have too because he's got some wiring in his teeth right now. If he did, he'd definitely have to wear something. I don't know how he feels about that or if that would be comfortable with him, but my guess would be he'd have to do something.
I'm very critical of myself, and I know that you need to realize your mistakes to grow.
I knew this would be a team that would play hard.
Effort has never been a problem with these guys. Our problem has been our guys not understanding and not recognizing certain situations.
Everybody's role on the team is a lot different than a year ago. For us, right now, it's really a one-game tournament. We've got to play to the best of our ability on Friday and hopefully advance and be able to play on Saturday.